Maha Kumbh in Allahabad has perhaps no parallel in terms of the sheer size of the congregation. In less than two months over 100 million people are expected to come to this city, which sees the confluence of two rivers of India—the Ganga and the Yamuna. People come to worship on the banks of the Ganga. Even as they celebrate the river it seems they don’t see the river, but only the ritual.

Pollution in Sonbhadra area is not new and has been talked about for many years but no action has been taken to check the pollution. This has led to long term health impacts which have now started to show up in the population of the region. CSE took up a study to look at these health impacts and to investigate the possible causes.

When the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) started its Green Rating Project in the mid-1990s, India had just liberalised its economy. Fears were that it would be disastrous if the country took the route to economic growth that ignored environmental considerations. The Green Rating Project was designed to find ways of measuring the environmental performance of companies and to drive changes in policy and practice through public disclosure.

In the years to come, India's expanding steel production will be largely driven by sponge iron. Sponge iron, also known as direct reduced iron(DRI), is produced from direct reduction of iron ore (in the form of lumps, pellets or fines) by a reducing gas produced from natural gas or coal. Sponge iron gives a cheaper way of producing steel which has a high demand in the market.

The Bhopal question has one more angle: why was there so much public and media outrage over this 25-year-old issue? Why did the national media focus on this story, which till now had been consigned to the backrooms where only noisy environmental activists live?